Happy Where You Are-Week 2-Married

I fell deeply and madly infatuated with Lee Braaten almost immediately upon meeting him. The way his eyes crinkle when he smiles made my heart skip a beat instantly. I knew this man was something special, and I had a bit of experience with lots of not so special. As we would learn, though, infatuation is not enough to sustain a relationship, let alone a near 25-year marriage.

The saving grace for our relationship is that neither one of us ever wanted to divorce at the same time. We were both young and stubborn, and as much as it pains me to admit it, A LOT of the turmoil was my creating. Interestingly, both Lee and I were raised in non-Christian homes with parents who divorced. In fact, my own biological parents were married to other people when I was conceived. Lee’s parents divorced after nearly two decades of marriage. Needless to say, neither one of us had any idea how to navigate a healthy marriage.

Lee himself had been married and divorced years before I met him. I had been involved in a complicated relationship right out of high school that had been what I will only describe as abusive and codependent. Consequently, I was raising my son Chase as a single mother when Lee and I met. We both can say with complete transparency that we began our journey together with a few suitcases full of baggage and no clue in which direction we were headed. It was like we didn’t have the compass to find our way to happiness, not to mention a reliable road map to be happy where we were but heck if we were not going to get married and give it a try!

And try we did! And yet, within our first five years of marriage we faced huge financial problems, dealt with child custody in regard to Chase with outrageous attorney fees and welcomed our son Caleb into our lives. In addition, Caleb was born with a condition in which he would need two kidney surgeries, and I lost my (foster) father to leukemia, which broke me in many, many ways. So, here we were: I was broken, depressed, and empty. Lee was stuck, frustrated, and tired. We were lost. Yet, God in His mercy met us where we were. We heard the Gospel, accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, were baptized, and started a new path with a life-changing trajectory.

And guess what, even with our change of direction, Lee and I had even more challenges, trials, and tests as new baby Christians. Our life was full of strife and pain and loss. Lee lost a job but then took a job that required him living in Wenatchee during the work week, we faced a potential foreclosure, and I experienced my most painful season of losing babies to both miscarriage and stillbirth. And that is where we clung to Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Memorizing scripture sustained us as the word of God does. He is the bread of life and we rested in Him. Lee usually did this far better than me, but I am a quick study and followed his lead as he followed the leading of God in our lives. He was steady and patient as Jesus is with his disciples. Lee would encourage me to find comfort in God, despite our circumstances.

Being happy or content in marriage is no easy task. It takes a great deal of dying to self and perseverance, patience, and a softening of one’s heart. And that is the thing of marriage; it is a constant journey. Being married is not just a legal document that entitles me to a portion of Lee’s 401K. For us, our marriage is a connection that honors God. My marriage is the catalyst that compels me to look at Lee the way God looks at him, with great joy, love, and hope. I am finding more and more every day that being my husband’s biggest and loudest cheerleader is far more fulfilling than constantly critiquing his choice of shoes, how he spends his money, or the status of his facial hair. I love him with a love that is beyond me. I love him through my loving Jesus. I am not equipped to do this on my own. It is only through the Christ that I find the strength to love Lee the way I was designed to love him. I honor my marriage with the grace of Jesus. Do I mess up? Every day! Do I confess, repent, and try again? Every day!

Being married to Lee Braaten has brought me immeasurable joy. Seeing him smile after well over two decades together still makes my heart skip a beat. Our life together is only sustained through our complete devotion to God. We approach our marriage with Paul’s words to the Colossians “and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through him.” This approach allows us on most days to say that we are truly, madly, deeply happy where we are, married.

Putting God at the Center of Our Marriage

Alicia and I married at the young ages of 21 and 19. We were 3 months pregnant when we said I do and began our new life together as one. We worked opposite shifts, and I often had to work overtime while dealing with long commutes and school work while doing my apprenticeship. Both of us came from families where our parents had struggled in their marriages that ended in divorce. Our parents are good people and we love them dearly, but they did not teach us how to have a marriage based upon biblical design. Needless to say, we struggled to meet each other’s needs in our new marriage. 

We often didn’t understand the different ways we needed to show love to one another, and I placed more importance on work and providing a comfortable life for my family. I would always be busy working on the house or at work, not giving Alicia the quality time she needed, which would leave her not in the mood to give me the respect that a husband needs. Our relationship struggled. 

When our son was ready to go into Preschool, we enrolled him into Prepare The Way at Allen Creek Community Church. We began to attend AC3 and get to know the members of this church. Over time we got to see how Christ was working in their lives. It took a few years until Alicia and I came to a point where we acknowledged that we were in desperate need to have Christ at the center of our marriage. It was going to be a big change for us and how our relationship was structured. We each gave our lives to Christ. 

I was learning to look at my wife and love her in the same way that Christ loved the church. Jesus was faithful to the Church to the point of his crucifixion.  I had to learn to die for my wife, like Christ. I had to die to my own desires and put her needs first, loving her unconditionally. In Ephesians 5:24-2 states that “Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives beto their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church.” With my commitment and application of these words, it has enabled Alicia to see the Christ figure in me as the head of the household and show me the respect that a man needs.

Both Alicia and I had to learn to let go of our short comings, unmet unrealistic expectations, and the mistakes we had made during the early years of our marriage. Alicia had held onto many resentments and often voiced them to me. They would fester inside and be brought up during disagreements, compounding other issues. It took time to let go, but with prayer and God’s work on our hearts we were able to “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, calmer and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:21-32

As forgiveness truly set in, a new level of communication and intimacy has occurred. The more I began using prayer and trusting in the Lord to handle my frustrations, the better I have been at bringing my concerns to Alicia in a loving manner. This has allowed Alicia to be more open, honest and forthcoming with her feelings. There is a new level of trust and safety within our marriage.

This trust has been established with Christ our Savior as the center of our marriage. When we pray together we openly place our hopes, dreams, and concerns on the table or our Father to handle. We can focus on our marriage knowing that our hearts are aligned. Our marriage is aligned by biblical design, and we have His Word to help guide us.

-Ken & Alicia Christiansen

WHAT EVERY MARRIAGE NEEDS: HOPE!

When I’m doing premarital counseling, the two books I recommend and require reading out of are Shaunti Feldhahn’s couplet: For Women Only and For Men Only.  The books are built on her study of thousands of men, women and teenagers in the area of friendship, romance and marriage.  Of the many powerful commodities she lists that make a great marriage, the easiest one for any couple to acquire is simply HOPE!

But it is this very thing that is sadly lacking today!  The first way we have failed the next generation looking at marriage is to let them grow up thinking that attaining and sustaining a great marriage is a myth, or so utterly rare that no one should ever expect to win the “great marriage lottery.”

After 12 years of research Feldhahn concludes that a pervasive sense of pessimism about marriage today is actually a leading cause of bad and failing marriages.  She says,

“If a struggling couple believes, ‘yeah, this is tough, but weren’t going to make it,’ they usually do.  But once people start to think otherwise, they all too soon employ the logic of futility: if the ship is going to sink anyway, why bother working so hard to bail it out?  That poisonous doubt – which is really about the possibility of marriage working in general – gets into our minds years before we approach the altar.”

You might think that acquiring marriage-hope requires saintly amounts of faith and Pollyanna positivity.  You might thing hope is harder to get than say, new communication skills, or listening skills, or changed behaviors in the areas of patience, parenting, money management, or training your husband how to remember a 3 item shopping list! (My wife knows nothing about that…). 

No, actually, hope is the easiest of marriage tools to get because it involves something as simple as knowledge.  Yes, the facts.  Based on the evidence, we need a new bumper sticker:  Great Marriages Happen.  I hear the doubting Thomas’s out there: that's not what I've heard!  I know, right?  So let the debunking begin:

1. ½ OF ALL MARRIAGES DO NOT END IN DIVORCE! Yup, that’s a myth.  According to the Census Bureau, 71% of people are still married to their first spouse!  Yes, divorce rates are higher for second marriages, and demographers still go with a 40-50% rate.  But these are projections that we’ve never actually hit. So while nobody knows exactly what the national divorce rate is, based on many factors for all marriages, it is likely in the 31-35% range.

2. REAL CHRISTIANITY MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE.  We’ve all heard that the national divorce rate is the exact same inside and outside the church.  Depressing!  And untrue.  Yes, in an old Barna research poll, the divorce rate was the same for people who mark “Christian” on the survey as those who did not.  But as you might guess, marking Christian on a survey says nothing about your spiritual and marital practices.  When you re-run the numbers factoring in just one critical marriage support – regular church attendance – the number drops precipitously.  27%!  Run the numbers for other practices of serious Christians, like family prayer, regular family time (even meals) together, attendance at a small group and the divorce rate becomes so small as to be almost negligible.  Think about that!  If Christians are divorcing as frequently as pagans it’s only those who choose to LIVE like pagans.

3. MOST MARRIAGES ARE HAPPY.  Married people are happier than singles, research has repeatedly shown.  This fact shouldn’t be used to disparage the single life, but it should be used to confront a growing problem in the church.  Singles are increasing opting for serial monogamy or cohabitation, accepting the cultures dictums about marriage:  marriage kills the magic, marriage is the end of sex, marriage is unnatural, marriage is slavery, etc.  Shaunti cites the research that debunks all this in her book, The Good News About Marriage.

4. SMALL THINGS MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE.  If you thought that a great marriage was built on rare things like Herculean self-control, or Yoda-like powers of discernment, think again.  Feldhahn’s research shows in 20 or so areas, she shows the massive difference little things make.  For example, saying thank you and using honoring language to husbands was present in 78% of happy marriages and 23% of unhappy ones.   Also, using verbal and physical signs of assurance for wives, like taking her hand or regularly, sincerely calling out her beauty was present in 77% of happy marriages, 18% of unhappy ones.

Check out her book here http://www.shaunti.com/research-good-news-about-marriage/link-to-book-page/ and all the shocking and happy statistics.  Imagine being able to tell a young couple, your children or yourself in hard times, that most marriages make it, most marriages are happy ones, that great marriages are formed with simple habits, and that church makes a huge, positive difference. 

That would inspire something very simple and powerful in everyone – HOPE.